“A gigantic cultural revolution is underway. Free expression and the joy of bodies, the autonomy, hybridisation and the reconstruction of languages, the creation of new singular and mobile modes of production – all this emerges, everywhere and continually.”
Toni Negri

There are threads running through the 1978 film Rockers that encapsulate the musical production process. From the opening scene of impromtu drummers and the horn rehearsal in the yard, followed by the studio session and manufacture of the single at the pressing plant, through to the distribution of records by motorbike and their reception at the counter of disco- shops and sound-systems the whole process of production, inclusive of the social practice from which it springs, is highlighted. But, crucially, each moment of this process is presented as a site of conflict. There is the musician as wage labourer having to ask to be paid and then being paid in records, there is the alternative distribution method of the motorbike and there is the policeraid on the sound-system. [Read more →]

“That’s what you say now, so at this moment you may even believe it.” (1)

1. A yuppie nightmare movie segues into the enigma of its director’s death. There are no more questions that could be answered. As there were previously no answers to be had. The director could be anonymous. But the author too is dead. Schnitzler died in 1931 and his traumnovelle lays it out: traum as dream and as trauma. The two almost interchangeable if it is that the dream is that which can present the ‘demand of the other’ and present it in such a way as for us to feel it as a pressure to respond (to our ‘other’ so to speak). But dream is fantasy too and the core here, the propulsion, comes as an imaginary infidelity. That it is desire that is beyond the demand. But is it good? Is it bad?[Read more →]

Side A Cornelius Cardew: Smash Smash The Social Contract
Side B Royal Family & The Poor: Vaneigem Mix

(Could have cut-up readings from Marx (see over) as small tracks on either side to be recorded as layers with different amounts of echo and with Eastenders on in the background and including repeating turntable samples of Scritti Politti’s politico-pop hit ‘Wood Beez’ – particularly the lines “Oh lets forget our ownership” and “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do not to meet with your approval” as puncturation between quotes?)